Black Bug

A terrifying throb of sinister synthesizers, endless shadows, and mysterious dried blood, this transplanted Swedish band now evading the authorities in Bordeaux, France is a seductively subtle nightmare you won’t be able to pull yourself away from. Breaking out from their insidious debut LP’s screech and grind, the reborn Black Bug carries their torch even further down the dimly-lit well of desperation, creating a far more atmospheric, horror film soundtrack-type feel between it’s gnarled bursts of blown-out Spits-style synthpunk energy. Cold-blooded robotic rhythms permeate every track, ushering in an instant sense of forboding and unsettling visions of the human race, completely overrun by androids with TV screens for faces. But under all the dark animosity, frigid song patterns, and morbid melodies, lies an album of incredible songs destined to haunt your abysmal nights, and chill your bones to no end.

The certified degenerate buzz that’s surrounded Black Bug for the past few years has been dangerously bubbling under the surface and toxically spread over a handful of singles and their debut LP, as they have emerged as the truly most demonic and nihilistic of the minimal synth acts of the current suffocating wave. Hailing from the bowels of the Swedish underground, Black Bug are a terrorizing ambient noise duo of questionable origin, existing in a vacuous plane of reality, where simplistic, analog reverberation is the answer to all of life’s questions, and when isn’t it?

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“Black Bug are a synth punk duo based in Bordeaux, France, and their LP Reflecting the Light is out via Hozac on March 26. On its face, the album features a handful of songs that definitely bring to mind the skate punk of the Spits or the sci-fi garage punch of Mind Spiders. But as “Threads” proves, they can also venture far outside the grips of punk music and straight into the territory of bleak synthesizers. This song sounds like the jittery, minimal, nihilistic descendent of Giorgio Moroder’s Metropolis arrangements. It’s a sound these two do well, especially because with Reflecting the Light, their dark future world is usually tempered by a barrage of fuzz-smothered punk music.” – Pitchfork
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